Draft French Health Bill Targets Binge Drinking and Mass-Produced Food

French Health Minister Marisol Touraine has reportedly proposed a law that would establish standards for ingredient transparency in mass-produced food, blank cigarette packets and “fixing rooms” that allow drug addicts to inject themselves in a safer environment, as well as impose fines—or possible jail sentences up to one year—for selling “products that make alcohol appear pleasant.” The draft law’s binge drinking provisions have attracted media attention for their seeming contradiction with French culture, but a 2013 report from France’s National Institute for Prevention and Education in Health found that excessive consumption of alcohol among French young people is rising, with as many as one in six children between ages 11 and 14 reporting that they have been drunk at least once. Under the proposed law, “Directly provoking a minor to excessive consumption of alcohol will be punished by a year imprisonment and a fine of €15,000.” The law would reportedly also punish anyone found guilty of inciting someone else to “drink until drunk” with six months’ imprisonment and a €7,500 fine; in addition, it more specifically targets “inciting people to drink on the Internet” and, according to an RTL radio interview with Touraine, “games or objects that glorify the excessive consumption of alcohol.” See The Local and The Guardian, October 15, 2014; The Washington Post, October 16, 2014.

Issue 542